1946 in poetry

yearbox2
in?=in poetry
in2?=in literature
cp=19th century
c=20th century
cf=21st century

yp1=1943
yp2=1944
yp3=1945
year=1946
ya1=1947
ya2=1948
ya3=1949
dp3=1910s
dp2=1920s
dp1=1930s
d=1940s
da=1950s
dn1=1950s
dn2=1960s
dn3=1970s|

Events

* W. H. Auden becomes a U.S. citizen
* Ezra Pound brought back to the United States on treason charges, but found unfit to face trial because of insanity and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he remained for 12 years (to 1958).
* Upon learning about Isaiah Berlin's visit to Russian poet Anna Akhmatova this year, Stalin's associate Andrei Zhdanov, with the approval of the Soviet Central Committee, issued the "Zhdanov decree" denouncing her as a "half harlot, half nun", and had her poems banned from publication. The 1946 resolution of the Central Committee was directed against two literary magazines, "Zvezda" and "Leningrad", which had published supposedly apolitical, "bourgeois", individualistic works of Akhmatova and the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko. In time Akhmatova's son would spend his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she would resort to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release.

Works published

* Elizabeth Bishop, "* "North & South," (Houghton Mifflin)
* Roy Campbell, "Talking Bronco"
* Allen Curnow, "Jack Without Magic" (Caxton), New Zealand [ [http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/curnowa.html Allen Curnow Web page] at the New Zealand Book Council website, accessed April 21, 2008]
* Walter De la Mare, "The Traveller"
* H.D., "The Flowering of the Rod", the final part of "Trilogy", a three-part poem on the experience of the blitz in wartime London
* Lawrence Durrell "Cities, Plain and People"
* Odysseus Elytis, "An Heroic And Funeral Chant For The Lieutenant Lost In Albania"
* G. Groll, editor, "De profundis", anthology of non-Nazi texts, GermanyPreminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, "The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics", 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "German Poetry" article, "Anthologies in German" section, pp 473-474]
* Maurice Lindsay, editor, "" (Faber and Faber)
* Robert Lowell, "Lord Weary's Castle", New York: Harcourt, BraceM. L. Rosenthal, "The New Poets: American and British Poetry Since World War II", New York: Oxford University Press, 1967, "Selected Bibliography: Individual Volumes by Poets Discussed", pp 334-340]
* James Merrill, "The Black Swan" (won Glascock Prize
* Lorine Niedecker, "New Goose", her first poetry collection
* Henry Reed, "A Map of Verona", including "Naming of Parts"
* Kendrick Smithyman, "Seven Sonnets", Auckland: Pelorus Press, New Zealand
* Dylan Thomas, "Deaths and Entrances", including "Fern Hill" and "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"
* R. S. Thomas, "The Stones of the Field"
* William Carlos Williams, "Paterson", Book I
* Reed Whittemore, "Heroes & Heroines"

Criticism, scholarship and biography

* Cleanth Brooks, "The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry"
* J. C. Reid, "Creative Writing in New Zealand", with two chapters on poetry, scholarship, New ZealandPreminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, et al., editors, "The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics", 1993, Princeton University Press and MJF Books, "New Zealand Poetry" article, "History and Criticism" section, p 837]

Awards and honors

* Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later the post would be called "Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress"): Karl Shapiro appointed this year
* Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: No award given
* Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: Edgar Lee Masters

Births

* August 5 — Ron Silliman, American poet
* October 28 — Sharon Thesen, Canadian poet
* December 20 — Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio
* December 30 — Patti Smith, American poet and musician
* Date not known:
** Joachim Sartorius, German [Hofmann, Michael, editor, "Twentieth-Century German Poetry: An Anthology", Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006]
** Alan Brunton (died 2002), New Zealand poet and scriptwriter [Robinson, Roger and Wattie, Nelson, "The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature", 1998, pp. 75-76, "Alan Brunton" article by Peter Simpson]
** Dale Zieroth, Canada

Deaths

* January 9 — Countee Cullen, 42, African American poet
* March 1 — Adriana Porter, 89, Wiccan poet
* May 25 — Ernest Rhys, 87, British poet, author, novelist, essayist best known for his role as founding editor of the Everyman's Library series of affordable classics
* July 8 — Orrick Glenday Johns, 59, American poet and playwright
* July 27 — Gertrude Stein, 73, poet and dramatist, of cancer

ee also

* Poetry
* List of poetry awards
* List of years in poetry

Notes